shine of summer. She could not understand why this
spring should make her feel so ill. She went into her own room and lay
down flat on the bed. She had the sensation of wishing to sink deeper
and deeper down, as if she could not sink too low. Her heart seemed to
beat more and more slowly; each breath that she drew was an effort to
her. She wondered a little if she was going to die.

Presently she heard somebody enter the room. She was not strong enough
to turn her head; but she opened her eyes and saw her maid Parker
standing beside her bed and regarding her with alarm.

"Law, miss, you do look bad!" she said.

Enid's white lips moved and tears trembled on her eyelashes; but she did
not speak. Parker, seriously alarmed, hastened to procure
smelling-salts, brandy, and eau-de-Cologne, and, with a few minutes'
care, these applications produced the desired result. Enid looked a
little less death-like; she smiled as she took a dose of brandy and
sal-volatile, and moved her fingers towards the woman at her side.
Parker did not at first know what she wanted, but discovered at last
that the girl wanted to hold her hand. Contact with something human
seemed to help to bring her back from the shadowy borderland where she
had been wandering. Parker, astonished and confused, wanted to draw away
her hand; but the small cold fingers closed over it resistlessly. Then
the woman stood motionless, holding a vinaigrette in her free hand, and
looking at the pale face on the pillow, at the pathetic blue eyes which
sought her own from time to time as if in want of pity. Something made
Parker's heart beat fast and the hot tears came into her hard, dark
eyes. She had never felt any particular fondness for Miss Enid before;
but somehow that mute appeal, that silent claiming of sympathy and help,
made the woman who had spent the last few weeks in dogging her footsteps
and spying out her secrets bitterly regret the bondage in which her past
life had placed her.

"Do you feel better now, miss?" she asked, in an unusually soft tone,
presently.

"Yes, thank you, Parker; but don't go just yet."

Parker stood immovable. Secretly she began to long to get away. She was
afraid that she should cry if she stayed there much longer holding
Enid's soft little white hand in hers.

"Parker," said Enid presently, "were you in your room last night soon
after I went to bed?" The maid slept in the next room to that of her
young mistress.

"Yes, miss--at le